Michelle Topham

Oh, I wondered if that comment was because salt was so expensive back then, far more expensive than rice, and he was pointing out how rich she was?

I guess that's where the Chinese idiom originally comes from then - the high price of salt being made into an idiom about experience? And thanks for the info. Very interesting :)

Hahahaha, nah, I was worse than you. I got the response I deserved. Peace :) And enjoy the rest of the drama. It's SO good.

Look, I will apologize for my rude response, and I'll tell you it's because we have had SOOOOOO many people with this exact same shipping going on, it's getting old. Especially for those of us who are in the 30s episodes and know what she told him, AND what he's like :)

You came in at the wrong time and got my nasty response. Didn't realize you were also early on in the drama so, to some extent, your comment does make sense.

Sorry, I'll try to control my temper a little better :) And hope you enjoy your shipping :)

Wow, you're incredibly defensive for "nothing to do with him being Winwin" :) Anyway, moving on. I have more important things to do.

So you get to decide in a public forum who responds to your posts and who doesn't? Are you such a snowflake that you can't take some criticism of your patently incorrect post?

If so, you're probably not built for a public forum. Just sayin' :)

What gets me is they keep coming back to waste minutes of their finite time slamming a drama or an ML/FL they hate.

I have hated many dramas. I usually (not always) leave one comment (maybe two if I'm answering someone's response) and then I move on to a drama I DO like.

I just don't get why anyone would waste sometimes many HOURS of their will-eventually-end time on this earth on something they hate? Totally bizarre.

She has ZERO chemistry with Ye Xian. Don't know why you shippers keep pushing this because YOU have the hots for Winwin? It's like reading posts by 12 year olds.

Dying laughing.

WANG XUAN FAN (to his wife after the birds' nest soup mess): "You drop this disaster on me. Are you God's punishment for me?"

And like I said before and expected, Jinzhao literally mopped the floor with the Wang wife, wrung out her mop, then went back to scrub some more. Hahahaha.

Episode 31...

Sure, she was irritating in the first few episodes, but by Ep 29 and 30 she's a fully-fledged pain in the a*s, and mean too :) Although, you might be correct, as the FL's grandmother did say "my friend has always been difficult" :)

Mother-in-law has turned awful too :)

I've always thought Chinese dramas do the "less is more" aspect of dramas incredibly well. They leave more to the imagination, which, to me, makes it even sexier.

Just like I have been told by many men, they find women sexier who wear clothes that cover their curves, as they get to get to guess about what might be underneath, rather than the women having their boobs and ass out for everyone to see :)

And no, they get great couple time in today's episodes.

Ratings do usually go up rather than down. Unless the ending is horrible. Like you said, the haters have already hit their 1 out of 10 rating without watching a second of the drama, and then gone off to destroy the rating of another drama who's ML or FL they hate :)

Can't fix stupid. Don't even try. Just do the best you can with the dramas you like :) (It's also why a lot of my ratings are slightly higher than they would normally be, but I often bump them up to counteract the idiots :)

Yep, it's rarely anything more than lips pressed together, which isn't really a kiss.

But... it's very much like kisses in western movies in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Same thing. And, frankly, I would much rather have it like this as it's more romantic, IMO, than two actors who barely know each other going at it on a bed, stark naked and eating each other's faces. Always found that a bit disturbing (I've never been good with PDA -- would probably do fine in Ming Dynasty China :)

I would much rather have these kisses than those in western dramas where the actors are eating each other's face. Have always hated that -- just TMI.

Yep. And it's a huge shame as she's a phenomenal actress.

I'm seeing the same trajectory I saw with K-dramas before they became popular. One of the first k-dramas I ever watched was Yellow Handkerchief -- https://kisskh.at/12757-yellow-handkerchief -- and I was OBSESSED. Never did watch the end though, as I moved to Thailand at about Episode 140 and could not find it with English subs in Bangkok :)(watched it on a local TV station in LA before I left).

Nobody I knew in the west watched K-dramas at that time, although they were HUGE in Thailand. Soon after that, though, I started to see K-dramas start to get really popular outside Asia and, within about 5 or6 years, everyone I knew was watching them - I'm now seeing the same type of movement with C-dramas.

Fingers crossed I'm correct, as I would love to see them get the massive audiences K-dramas now have :)

Ah thanks so much. I knew I'd seen it but could NOT remember which one :)

I was writing about K-dramas and C-dramas for about 10 years, but dropped both writing and viewing of K-dramas completely about six months ago in favor of just C-dramas. Not because I disliked them, but because I'm enjoying C-dramas much more :)

And yep, far more viewers, but that is also slowly changing. There have been several C-dramas that have done extremely well on Netflix (in the Top 10 on their Non-English TV Shows chart) -- Pursuit of Jade performed very well, was on the Top 10 for four or five weeks, The First Frost hit #6 on the chart, Hidden Love, Perfect Match and When I Fly Towards You also performed well with many millions of views.

No, they're nowhere near the number of K-dramas that are successful on Netflix, as most of them are released on China's own streaming services, and as some weeks four or five K-dramas are in the Top 10, but they show the same trajectory K-dramas did about 10 or 15 years ago -- on the way up, and rapidly :)

Isn't that often the case though? The "if I can't have her, nobody else can, and I'll make sure her life is a living hell because of it" sentiment.

Look at the disturbing way he acted when he knew she'd been kidnapped by a trafficker. Instead of letting CYY know where she was, he went there and tried to buy her, which I thought meant it was so that he could check she was there and then alert CYY but...nooooooo.

Instead he snuck out the back door because he was up to something nefarious. Even his aide knows he has a screw loose at this point :)